WHY DEMOCRATIC NATIONS SHOW
A MORE ARDENT AND ENDURING LOVE
OF EQUALITY THAN OF LIBERTY

The first and most intense passion that is produced by equality of condition
is, I need hardly say, the love of that equality. My readers will therefore
not be surprised that I speak of this feeling before all others.

Everybody has remarked that in our time, and especially in France, this
passion for equality is every day gaining ground in the human heart. It
has been said a hundred times that our contemporaries are far more ardently
and tenaciously attached to equality than to freedom; but as I do not find
that the causes of the fact have been sufficiently analyzed, I shall endeavor
to point them out.

It is possible to imagine an extreme point at which freedom and equality
would meet and blend. Let us suppose that all the people take a part in
the government, and that each one of them has an equal right to take a
part in it. As no one is different from his fellows, none can exercise
a tyrannical power; men will be perfectly free because they are all entirely
equal; and they will all be perfectly equal because they are entirely free.
To this ideal state democratic nations tend. This is the only complete
form that equality can assume upon earth; but there are a thousand others
which, without being equally perfect, are not less cherished by those nations.

The principle of equality may be established in civil society without
prevailing in the political world. There may be equal rights of indulging
in the same pleasures, of entering the same professions, of frequenting
the same places; in a word, of living in the same manner and seeking wealth
by the same means, although all men do not take an equal share in the government.
A kind of equality may even be established in the political world though
there should be no political freedom there. A man may be the equal of all
his countrymen save one, who is the master of all without distinction and
who selects equally from among them all the agents of his power. Several
other combinations might be easily imagined by which very great equality
would be united to institutions more or less free or even to institutions
wholly without freedom.

Although men cannot become absolutely equal unless they are entirely
free, and consequently equality, pushed to its furthest extent, may be
confounded with freedom, yet there is good reason for distinguishing the
one from the other. The taste which men have for liberty and that which
they feel for equality are, in fact, two different things; and I am not
afraid to add that among democratic nations they are two unequal things.

Upon close inspection it will be seen that there is in every age some
peculiar and preponderant fact with which all others are connected; this
fact almost always gives birth to some pregnant idea or some ruling passion,
which attracts to itself and bears away in its course all the feelings
and opinions of the time; it is like a great stream towards which each
of the neighboring rivulets seems to flow.

Freedom has appeared in the world at different times and under various
forms; it has not been exclusively bound to any social condition, and it
is not confined to democracies. Freedom cannot, therefore, form the distinguishing
characteristic of democratic ages. The peculiar and preponderant fact that
marks those ages as its own is the equality of condition; the ruling passion
of men in those periods is the love of this equality. Do not ask what singular
charm the men of democratic ages find in being equal, or what special reasons
they may have for clinging so tenaciously to equality rather than to the
other advantages that society holds out to them: equality is the distinguishing
characteristic of the age they live in; that of itself is enough to explain
that they prefer it to all the rest.

But independently of this reason there are several others which will
at all times habitually lead men to prefer equality to freedom.

If a people could ever succeed in destroying, or even in diminishing,
the equality that prevails in its own body, they could do so only by long
and laborious efforts. Their social condition must be modified, their laws
abolished, their opinions superseded, their habits changed, their manners
corrupted. But political liberty is more easily lost; to neglect to hold
it fast is to allow it to escape. Therefore not only do men cling to equality
because it is dear to them; they also adhere to it because they think it
will last forever.

That political freedom in its excesses may compromise the tranquillity,
the property, the lives of individuals is obvious even to narrow and unthinking
minds. On the contrary, none but attentive and clear-sighted men perceive
the perils with which equality threatens us, and they commonly avoid pointing
them out. They know that the calamities they apprehend are remote and flatter
themselves that they will only fall upon future generations, for which
the present generation takes but little thought. The evils that freedom
sometimes brings with it are immediate; they are apparent to all, and all
are more or less affected by them. The evils that extreme equality may
produce are slowly disclosed; they creep gradually into the social frame;
they are seen only at intervals; and at the moment at which they become
most violent, habit already causes them to be no longer felt.

The advantages that freedom brings are shown only by the lapse of time,
and it is always easy to mistake the cause in which they originate. The
advantages of equality are immediate, and they may always be traced from
their source.

Political liberty bestows exalted pleasures from time to time upon a
certain number of citizens. Equality every day confers a number of small
enjoyments on every man. The charms of equality are every instant felt
and are within the reach of all; the noblest hearts are not insensible
to them, and the most vulgar souls exult in them. The passion that equality
creates must therefore be at once strong and general. Men cannot enjoy
political liberty unpurchased by some sacrifices, and they never obtain
it without great exertions. But the pleasures of equality are self-proffered;
each of the petty incidents of life seems to occasion them, and in order
to taste them, nothing is required but to live.

Democratic nations are at all times fond of equality, but there are
certain epochs at which the passion they entertain for it swells to the
height of fury. This occurs at the moment when the old social system, long
menaced, is overthrown after a severe internal struggle, and the barriers
of rank are at length thrown down. At such times men pounce upon equality
as their booty, and they cling to it as to some precious treasure which
they fear to lose. The passion for equality penetrates on every side into
men's hearts, expands there, and fills them entirely. Tell them not that
by this blind surrender of themselves to an exclusive passion they risk
their dearest interests; they are deaf. Show them not freedom escaping
from their grasp while they are looking another way; they are blind, or
rather they can discern but one object to be desired in the universe.

What I have said is applicable to all democratic nations; what I am
about to say concerns the French alone. Among most modern nations, and
especially among all those of the continent of Europe, the taste and the
idea of freedom began to exist and to be developed only at the time when
social conditions were tending to equality and as a consequence of that
very equality. Absolute kings were the most efficient levelers of ranks
among their subjects. Among these nations equality preceded freedom; equality
was therefore a fact of some standing when freedom was still a novelty;
the one had already created customs, opinions, and laws belonging to it
when the other, alone and for the first time, came into actual existence.
Thus the latter was still only an affair of opinion and of taste while
the former had already crept into the habits of the people, possessed itself
of their manners, and given a particular turn to the smallest actions in
their lives. Can it be wondered at that the men of our own time prefer
the one to the other?

I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom;
left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation
of it with regret. But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable,
incessant, invincible; they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot
obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. They will endure
poverty, servitude, barbarism, but they will not endure aristocracy.

This is true at all times, and especially in our own day. All men and
all powers seeking to cope with this irresistible passion will be overthrown
and destroyed by it. In our age freedom cannot be established without it,
and despotism itself cannot reign without its support.